


Unexpected

by Hidingtobeseen



Category: Young Justice
Genre: Birdflash - Freeform, Gen, pls dont hate me, this is an old story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 06:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3280160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hidingtobeseen/pseuds/Hidingtobeseen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally expected a lot of things when he became Kid Flash. This wasn't one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story a long time ago, when the show was still running. (Aka: the good old days). So the writing style is a little questionable, but

The fame. The power. The “glory”. That was what he was thinking of when he starting trying to recreate the experiment. After it worked, after he became Kid Flash, he realized that what he really enjoyed was the feeling afterwards. The look of the crowd after he defeated a villain. The smile of a kid when he rescued their parent. Or just going to bed, with the feeling that he was doing something right. But the pain. The terror. The dread. That was definitely not what he signed up for. And this. Standing in this sickly white room, staring at the figure on the bed. This was nothing he ever expected. He didn’t expect to meet him in this crazy world of crime fighting. He didn’t expect to become so close to him. He didn’t expect the times they had spent talking, laughing, fighting together. He never expected to grow to…care for him so much. And he never thought of standing here, watching his chest shudder with faltering gasps. And even now, it all seemed unreal. Five minutes ago he was sitting on the couch at the cave, finishing the contents of the fridge. A frantic phone call and a mad dash to the hospital, and he was watching the life drain out of his best friend. The little he understood over the phone explained the many tears and gashes in the boy’s uniform. It was a regular stakeout, gone horribly wrong when the thugs took him by surprise. His fighting was never to be underestimated, but 10 to 1 wasn’t fair. He doubted even the boy’s mentor could have won. But now he was here. Some of the injuries were obvious: limbs bent the way they shouldn’t be, blood oozing out of rips in the red and yellow fabric. But he could only guess at the damage inside.

Wally dropped to his knees. Now level with the boy’s bed, he looked at his friend’s face. His mask was ripped enough that Wally could see one eyelid fluttering. If Wally ignored the split lip and angry red stain on his cheek, he could almost imagine he was sleeping. Very gentle, Wally placed one hand on the shuddering chest. He clenched his jaw. _This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t possible._ But even through his glove he felt the sticky moisture seeping through the boy’s shirt. _No!_ He screamed at himself. _He is going to be fine. He is going to make it. He won’t…_ Wally’s imagination was suddenly filled with sickening images. A heart rate machine, running a steady 0. The beep piercing through the air. A white sheet drawn over the dark head. A brown wooden casket, his name printed on the front in curling gold engraving. A bleak stone.

**Here lies…**

_NO!_ He squeezed his eyes shut. _No…no…no…no…_ His head began pounding, a never-ending loop of heart shattering agony.

“Aaa…” This slight noise that could barely be called a moan brought Wally’s head shooting up from where it was resting against the cool metal of the bed.

“W…w…” He turned his head and was met with a spot of crystal blue, looking straight at him. 

“Wally…” Despite himself, Wally could feel his eyes filling with the fear he felt. He reached one trembling hand out to brush back the hair sticking to his forehead.

“Rob?”

That one word, breaking on its way out of his throat, suddenly reminded Wally of where he was. He was kneeling on the floor of the emergency room of Gotham Central Hospital. His ears were filled with the voices of panicking doctors and nurses, and the scraping of wheels against linoleum. His nose was assaulted with the stinging scent of bile and bleach. It was starting to overwhelm him, when he felt fingers lightly plucking at his shirt. Suddenly nothing else mattered except the one blue eye looking up at him.

“Wally…” the boy gasped. “It’s…” A shallow, wheezing breath. “only…a…” A gasp followed by a long exhale. “only a…flesh wound.”

Suddenly, a hand was on Wally’s shoulder. It was shaking him, pulling him away from the bed. A voice was in his ear, screaming things he didn’t understand. He twisted and squirmed, trying to fight his way free. Then, strong arms wrapped around him, holding him in place. Wally stopped struggling, keeping his eyes locked on the blue one, as the bed was swarmed with doctors and wheeled into another room. Wally stayed frozen until the doors swung shut. Then he became aware of Kaldur’s voice in his ear.

“Wally? Wally? He will be fine.” Kaldur shook him lightly. “Do you hear me? He. Will. Be. Fine.”

Wally lifted his head to see the rest of the team standing around him. The reality of the situation was etched onto their faces. In the other room…Robin was dying. A stinging acid rushed into his mouth and Wally’s knees collapsed. Kaldur held him for a moment before slowly lowering him to the floor. On his hands and knees, Wally watched tears drip onto the polished floor.

 

_Come on Rob. You can do this. Don’t leave me._


	2. Chapter 2

No one made a sound in the Emergency Room of Gotham Central Hospital as The Batman came sweeping through the doors. One young nurse, too afraid to move, was frozen with one hand raised to the elevator button.

“Where.” It wasn’t a question, because questions could be ignored, left unanswered. It was a statement. Because Bruce was going to his son and no one could do anything otherwise.

____

The rest of the team had left. Gone to find the men who had done this to their friend. They couldn’t help anymore from the hospital, and most of them dealt with grief by punching things. But Wally had refused to leave. It took equal parts of gentle coaxing from Miss Martian and physical force from Aqualad to get him into the chair he was now crumpled in, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

“Where were you?” Wally’s voice was flat and he didn’t even bother looking up. Batman’s presence always changed the feeling of a room. Sometimes it made him feel safer but most of the time, frightened, like a rabbit wary of a momentarily tame fox. This time, he felt the presence, but none of the emotions that went with it.  

All he could feel was the silence

“Where were you?” He repeated, speech muffled by his hands. “He got here twenty minutes ago.” Wally could feel something crumble in his chest. Had it really only been twenty minutes? But then again, this was Batman. He had taken _twenty minutes_ to get here.

“Twenty minutes.” Fury seeped into his words. “Where. Were. You?” Wally looked up now. His hair was disheveled, like he had been pulling on it, and his face was tight, eyes red, cheeks damp and shining.

“Before. Where were you?” He glared up at the dark figure. “When he was surrounded by men. When t-they,” Wally’s mouth began to quiver but he kept his eyes fixed on the impassive man in front of him. “They had knifes an-and, crowbars, and-” How could he look so calm? Wally bit hard on the inside of his cheek and tasted blood. How could he be so uncaring, so unfeeling? This was Wally’s best friend but goddamnit it was his _son_!

“He _needed you!_ ” Wally spat the words out, desperate to claw out a reaction out of him. And something quaked in Batman’s face. His eyes squeezed themselves shut and he swayed slightly where he stood. One hand reached out and grasped the edge of the bed, the other clenched in a fist at his side.

Wally pressed his chapped lips into a thin line. This was the most emotion that he had ever seen from the hero. And it still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. Tears started to fill his eyes again.

“He needed help.” The anger was suddenly drained from his words and all that was left was desperation. “I, I could have-” Wally vision blurred as he looked in front of him, one hand gesturing wildly. To the bed in the center of the room. To the form lying in it.

“I should have, oh god, I,” Wally’s voice caught in his throat. He looked back to the figure at the foot of the bed. Batman had always seemed one of the great forces of the universe. Like the weather. Like the night. Now all Wally saw was a man. A man hiding behind a mask. Too proud to cry. Too self-absorbed to care. Too gone to be worth anything. Wally’s whole body started to tremble, but not with anger. The ground had been swept from underneath him the moment he answered the phone and he had been falling falling falling. But now he has landed. Heavy and broken. Understanding crushing him into the ground.

Robin is dead.


End file.
